From: Steve Woodson
Message: 3512
Date: 2000-09-01
Mark Odegard wrote:
In The Living Goddess, pp. 176-77, Marija Gimbutas writes: --start quote--There still existed a farming culture along the Danube Valley west and east of present-day Belgrade throughout the first half of the second millenium B.C., an "island" of Old European culture almost devoid of Indo-European elements. This remarkable respository of Old European traditions extended from the Tisza and Mutres (Maros) basin in the west, along the Danubian valley, and across the provinces of Banat and Oltenia. (The names of the culture groups used in the archaeological literature are Periam, Pecica, Verbicioara, Vattina/Girla-Mare, Cirna.) Their permanant agriculture settlements formed tells as in the Neolithic, and there are no Kurgan (round barrow) graves in this area. The burial cemeteries of the early second millennium B.C. and cremation cemeteries of the mid-second millennium BC yielded elegant and delicate vases, thin-walled, well-baked and burnished, incised and white-encrusted with Old European symbols .... The figurines continue the Old European tradition, representing the goddess of death and regeneration.--end quote-- I had to look up Banat and Oltenia. Banat is essentially everything east of the Tisza and north of the Danube, up to the mountains in the south and east. Oltenia is still murky; it seems to be in Romania. The mentioned archaeological 'culture groups' are unknown to me. The time period is 2000-1500 BCE. Gimbutas says this part of Europe was not 'kurganized', i.e., it had not been Indo-Europeanized. This has implications for the language-replacement required by Gimbutas' Kurgan theory, and where the linguistic Indo-Europeanization first took root. Elsewhere in the book, she points to the Globular Amphora culture as the first seriously kurganized region in Europe. This, of course, is north of Hungary, encompassing Poland and adjacent regions east and west. This is also proposed as a Balto-Slavic homeland, as well as the point from where Germanic headed north. In prehistoric Western Europe, we seem to have only the Celts. In North Central Europe, the Germans expand south rather late, practically in historic times, perhaps an opportunistic response to the huge blow delivered to the Gauls by the Romans in the person of Julius Caesar. The impression I'm getting is that the Indo-Europeanization of Central and Western Europe, outside of Greece, is a rather late phenomenon, one instigated by very warlike Celts, Germans and in historic times, Latins. This is the old-fashioned conquest model combined with migrations. The idea is that the non-IE language[s] of this part of the world were still alive and kicking until quite late. The model of IEs spreading verb paradigms via the sword makes a great deal of sense, if you push the time for this down to the mid-to-late 2nd millennium. If we accept a late date for the entry of Greek into Greece (1600s or so), then even Southern Europe follows this pattern. The pattern, then, is post-2000 chariot-riding IEs overrunning Europe as well as just about everyplace else. Comments? Mark.
Mark,
Oltenia gets its name from the Olt River (German Alt) in Wallachia. Also, the present, most western provence of this same area is called Oltenia.
Steve